November writing

Instead I’m doing NotNoHellNo. (This consists of sticking the mostly-finished draft of Book2 in a drawer and forcing myself to not look at it until the beginning of December.)

However, I haven’t given up on writing completely for the month of November. I am presently in the process of researching/brainstorming/outline-drafting for the next book I want to write: God is broken. Satan is burned out. Free Will was a mistake.

I waver between being really excited about writing this book, and being really terrified of writing this book. What I want it to be is far more ambitious than anything I’ve ever written before (in novel-length, that is.) My goal is to have the basic gist of it roughed out and a first chapter written by the end of November. So far I have five “starts” written, and none of them feel right, and I just don’t think that my usual process of plowing ahead and coming back to fix it later would work on this book.

I suggest you forget trying to get the start right. Just write. The start will rise up and force you to the keyboard and you will bless those hours and days you spent learning to touch type because your tears will stream down your face and you will not be able to see the keyboard as your fingers pour your heart into the words.

Stuart Woods tacked a prologue onto the beginning of _Chiefs_ because the novel started slowly otherwise. The prologue hints at mystery. The original beginning did not.

Here is what happened to me.

I had an idea for a short story. Or so I told myself. It burned out of me in a 10 day blitz of 3000 words-a-day and totaled 125 pages.

I slept for nearly two days after that. When I read the thing, at the end I thought, “It’s not finished.”

Called what I had written Part I. Wrote Part II. That added 135 pages. Wrote a bridge between the parts. Another 16 pages. Decided it needed another part and another bridge. Fumbled around with Part III six times and could not get up steam to carry it to a conslusion.

Why?

Because I had not figured out what it was all about. What motivated my hero?

Then one Sunday afternoon, I was driving home from my writing group, mulling over the story while I sat at a red light when it hit me. And I knew what the story was about. And I knew what motivated my hero. And I knew that I had to change the title.

I drove home through my tears. I staggered through the front door, leaving it wide open in my rush to get the keyboard. I sobbed while my computer booted. I pounded keys that I could not see for my tears. And when the pounding was done, I saved the Prelude. 800 words of longing and love and loss.

Part III flowed like the clearest pinot noir after that. I revised everything to conform to the new vision. The bridges got slashed. One is 5 pages; the other, 8. Added a postlude. Total: 97,000 words.

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